Programmable Filament: Printed Filaments for Multi-material 3D Printing

ACM User Interface Software & Technology (UIST), 2020 DOI

Abstract

From full-color objects to functional capacitive artifacts, 3D printing multi-materials became essential to broaden the application areas of digital fabrication. We present Programmable Filament, a novel technique that enables multi-material printing using a commodity FDM 3D printer, requiring no hardware upgrades. Our technique builds upon an existing printing technique in which multiple filament segments are printed and spliced into a single threaded filament. We propose an end-to-end pipeline for 3D printing an object in multi-materials, with an introduction of the design systems for end-users. Optimized for low-cost, single-nozzle FDM 3D printers, the system is built upon our computational analysis and experiments to enhance its validity over various printers and materials to design and produce a programmable filament. Finally, we discuss application examples and speculate the future with its potential, such as custom filament manufacturing on-demand.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{2020-programmable-filament,
  title = {{Programmable Filament: Printed Filaments for Multi-material 3D Printing}},
  author = {Haruki Takahashi AND Parinya Punpongsanon AND Jeeeun Kim},
  booktitle = {ACM User Interface Software \& Technology (UIST)},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.1145/3379337.3415863},
  url = {https://www.fip.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp/pubs/programmable-filament}
}

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